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y separately published work icon Birds of Passage single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1983... 1983 Birds of Passage
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Birds of Passage is the powerful and haunting story of Seamus O'Young, an Australian-born Chinese, on a collision course with the past.

'He reconstructs his past through the eyes of Shan, an ancestor who came to Australia in the 1880s. And, just as Shan was driven from the goldfields by depravity, racism and sheer greed; so Seamus finds himself, a century later, fighting for his own life and sanity.'

Source: Goodreads.

Exhibitions

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 1983 .
      image of person or book cover 129104288797054943.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 157p.
      Reprinted: 1984
      ISBN: 0868614041, 0868611263
    • North Ryde, Ryde - Gladesville - Hunters Hill area, Northwest Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,: Sirius Books , 1989 .
      image of person or book cover 2342045059102787240.jpg
      Extent: 157p.
      ISBN: 0207161488 (pbk.)
      Series: Sirius Books Sirius Quality Paperbacks Angus and Robertson (publisher), series - publisher
    • St Leonards, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 1993 .
      Extent: 157p.
      ISBN: 1863734988 (pbk.)
    • St Leonards, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 1999 .
      image of person or book cover 7097803663178439328.jpg
      ISBN: 1865080578
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Untapped , 2021 .
      image of person or book cover 4742577431822454176.png
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      ISBN: 9781922730480
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Brio Books , 2022 .
      image of person or book cover 3433564696905245550.png
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 164p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 25 October 2022.
      ISBN: 9781761280764
Alternative title: Les Oiseaux de passage
Language: French
    • Toulouse,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Editions Ombres ,
      1988 .
      image of person or book cover 6238192507657284862.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 208p.p.

Works about this Work

Detours and Divagations Brian Castro , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2019;
y separately published work icon Reckoning with the Past : Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature Ashley Barnwell , Joseph Cummins , Abingdon : Routledge , 2018 17218286 2018 single work criticism

'This is the first book to examine how Australian fiction writers draw on family histories to reckon with the nation's colonial past. Located at the intersection of literature, history, and sociology, it explores the relationships between family storytelling, memory, and postcolonial identity. With attention to the political potential of family histories, Reckoning with the Past argues that authors' often autobiographical works enable us to uncover, confront, and revise national mythologies. An important contribution to the emerging global conversation about multidirectional memory and the need to attend to the effects of colonisation, this book will appeal to an interdisciplinary field of scholarly readers. '

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Pacific Studies : Quo Vadis? Anne Holden Rønning , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 13 2014; (p. 23-34)

'Looking back to the past this paper discusses why Pacific studies and in particular Australasian studies became an area of interest in tertiary education in Europe. What subject areas initiated these studies, and how do past legacies shape the present? With cutbacks in higher education over the past two decades the future of interdisciplinary studies and the humanities looks bleak. At the same time due to global business and increased political communication across borders there is a vibrant interest in and need for such studies among businesses and students. For most Europeans the literature of settler countries, with their European legacy, makes access to ways of thought and culture easier than studies of countries with other mythological backgrounds. In today’s multicultural environment such studies can provide knowledge for an understanding of other cultures and increase tolerance of the ‘other’. Area studies have relevance to our situation in Europe with increased migrancy, not least as a result of Schengen and EU regulations. ' (Author's abstract)

Degrees of Transparency in Brian Castro's Birds of Passage and After China Marjorie Aambrosio , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies , Autumn vol. 35 no. 1 2012; (p. 73-82)
'This essay intends to highlight how Brian Castro's Birds of Passage (1983) and After China (1992) waver between transparency and opacity. It explores some of the techniques employed - among which a blurring of categories and a questioning of narratorial reliability - in order to create what Roland Barthes calls a "text of bliss" - one which challenges the limits of language as a means of communication.' (Author's abstract)
Literary Transculturations and Modernity : Some Reflections Anne Holden Rønning , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 4 no. 1 2011;
'In an increasingly global world literary and cultural critics are constantly searching for ways in which to analyse and debate texts and artefacts. Postcolonial theories and studies have provided useful tools for analyzing, among others, New Literatures in English and other languages, as well as throwing new light on an understanding of older texts. But today, with the increase in diaspora studies in literature and cultural studies, new ways of looking at texts are paramount, given the complexity of contemporary literature. There is, as Bill Ashcroft writes, a 'strange contrapuntal relationship between identity, history, and nation that needs to be unravelled.' With references to Australian literature, this article will present some reflections on transculturation and modernities, the themes of the Nordic Network of Transcultural Literary Studies, which considers transculturation not as a theory but, 'a matrix through which a set of critical tools and vocabularies can be refined for the study of texts from a localized world, but institutionalised globally' and where , ' the engagement of multiple sites and their routes with the progression of "one modernity" in some way or other inform the aesthetics of transcultural literature.' (Author's introduction)
Travelling Birds Graham Burns , 1984 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 60 1984; (p. 17-18)

— Review of Getting Away with It : A Novel Kevin Brophy , 1982 single work novel ; Birds of Passage Brian Castro , 1983 single work novel
Distinguished Fiction Frank Kellaway , 1983 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , December no. 93 1983; (p. 65-66)

— Review of Birds of Passage Brian Castro , 1983 single work novel ; Over Here, Harv! Bruce Dawe , 1983 selected work short story ; Hostages Fay Zwicky , 1983 selected work short story ; Headlocks & Other Stories Barry Hill , 1983 selected work short story
Serious and Impressive But Disjointed Novel Mark Thomas , 1983 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 8 October 1983; (p. 19)

— Review of Birds of Passage Brian Castro , 1983 single work novel
Winging Towards Elusive Heights Nick Creech , 1983 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian Magazine , 20-21 August 1983; (p. 15)

— Review of Birds of Passage Brian Castro , 1983 single work novel
Dead Jumbuck Nicholas Jose , 1984 single work review
— Appears in: The Age Monthly Review , January 1984; (p. 19-20)

— Review of Birds of Passage Brian Castro , 1983 single work novel ; Matilda, My Darling Nigel Krauth , 1983 single work novel
Looking (North-) West to the East : Some Thoughts on the Asianisation of Australian Literature Graham Huggan , 1992 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Making of a Pluralist Australia 1950-1990: Selected Papers from the Inaugural EASA Conference 1991 1992; (p. 219-227)
Wang Guanglin : An Interview with Brian Castro (9/11/2001) Wang Guanglin (interviewer), 2004 single work interview
— Appears in: Being and Becoming : On Cultural Identity of Diasporic Chinese Writers in America and Australia 2004; (p. 324-334)
Decentring Orientalist and Ocker Masculinities in Birds of Passage Kam Louie , 2005 single work essay
— Appears in: Culture, Identity, Commodity : Diasporic Chinese Literature in English 2005; (p. 183-204)
Appropriating National Myths : Brian Castro's 'Birds of Passage' Marilyne Brun , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Fact and Fiction : Readings in Australian Literature 2008; (p. 227-239)
Writing Chinese Diaspora : After the 'White Australia Policy' Deborah L. Madsen , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Down Under : Australian Literary Studies Reader 2009; (p. 263-270) Australian Made : A Multicultural Reader 2010; (p. 158-172)
An overview of Chinese-Australian writing.
Last amended 7 Sep 2022 10:41:39
Subjects:
  • c
    China,
    c
    East Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
Settings:
  • 1850s
  • 1950s
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